CHAPTER III.
LIVING OFF THE ENEMY--REVELING IN THE FATNESS OF THE COUNTRY--SOLDIERLY PURVEYING AND CAMP COOKERY--SUSCEPTIBLE TEAMSTERS AND THEIR TENDENCY TO FLIGHTINESS--MAKING SOLDIER'S BED.
For weeks we rode up and down--hither and thither--along the length of the narrow, granite-walled Valley; between mountains so lofty that the sun labored slowly over them in the morning, occupying half the forenoon in getting to where his rays would reach the stream that ran through the Valley's center.

Perpetual shadow reigned on the northern and western faces of these towering Nights--not enough warmth and sunshine reaching them in the cold months to check the growth of the ever-lengthening icicles hanging from the jutting cliffs, or melt the arabesque frost-forms with which the many dashing cascades decorated the adjacent rocks and shrubbery.

Occasionally we would see where some little stream ran down over the face of the bare, black rocks for many hundred feet, and then its course would be a long band of sheeny white, like a great rich, spotless scarf of satin, festooning the war-grimed walls of some old castle.
Our duty now was to break up any nuclei of concentration that the Rebels might attempt to form, and to guard our foragers--that is, the teamsters and employee of the Quartermaster's Department--who were loading grain into wagons and hauling it away.
This last was an arduous task.

There is no man in the world that needs as much protection as an Army teamster.

He is worse in this respect than a New England manufacturer, or an old maid on her travels.